Waking up with a start after a surprisingly poor night’s worth of sleep, I see that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Howard Sinker mocking a certain part of the Oakland Press’s Pat Caputo’s suggestion that failing to land Zach Parise and Ryan Suter does not in fact mark the end of the world as we know it…

n retrospect, it may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to the Red Wings. Sure, they need a replacement for defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, perhaps the greatest player to ever take his position. Suter was the best available option. But he is not Nicklas Lidstrom. He has never been a second-team NHL all-star nor a Norris Trophy finalist for best defenseman in the NHL. His plus-minus ratio is minus-4 in 39 career playoff games, and he was a minus player in last spring’s playoffs, too.

As someone who’s generally all but plugged into their computer, that was a strange feeling, but I went with my gut and assumed that Holland’s rather mild reaction to Doan’s agent’s pitch had to do with more than simply striking out on Suter and Parise…And as Paul and the rest of the hockey world found out that we might all like to have Terry Bross as an agent in reverse.

1. About ten minutes into Grand Rapids Griffins assistant coach Jim Paek’s drills with the “afternoon group,” which happened to be “Team Lidstrom,” I was taken back to my childhood by a torrent of f-bombs so loud, so sharply spoken and so eloquently used as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and even prepositions and articles that I thought it was my father speaking (and dad was a probation officer in Detroit in the 70’s and 80’s with a veritable Jedi knightship in cursing). It would turn out that Brian Lashoff had later told me that the players were a bit tired from some serious dry-land training earlier in the day, but that they needed to be brought to attention, and as such, it was good that what was said was said.

Crazy things happened on Twitter a week ago, when one fan found Mike Babcock at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, the Forechecker found Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold’s plane headed to International Falls, Minnesota, the home of Ryan Suter’s agent, and a fine gent found Mike Ilitch’s plane en route to Madison, Wisconsin…

And it turns out that, on the day that Ryan Suter and Zach Parise were introduced as members of the Minnesota Wild, yes, last week, Mike Babcock joined Mike Ilitch, Chris Chelios and Ken Holland in attempts to convince Suter to play for the Wings.

As they were not successful, Chelios took the high road regarding Suter’s decision while speaking to the Detroit Free Press’s George Sipple…

The Free Press’s Helene St. James confirmed that the Red Wings have given Shane Doan’s agent a call earlier this afternoon, and as I’m writing this, I’m about 40 minutes from being 100 feet too far from Ken Holland to haul my ass down to the Red Wings’ beat writers’ pack around the Wings’ GM…So I’m about to read something I wasn’t able to hear right along with you:

And what did Holland say to the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan? Well, he, um…

“We have 14 or 15 forwards,” said Holland of his current roster. “Would we like to add a different type of forward, yeah. We’d like to add one more experienced defenseman. We’ll see what the next two months bring.”

Holland said he’s been in touch with different teams regarding trades, and he’s received calls from teams, but nothing is materialzing.

“Nothing really going on,” Holland said. “Most trades are made over the course of weeks and months, you think and talk about it. A lot of teams are looking at what they’ve got and what they don’t have.”

I just told Mike Babcock that I don’t start fires despite being a blogger (Babcock does not have a high opinion of our ilk. Also: he’s ridiculously fit) so here comes the fire, of course, from the Free Press’s Helene St. James:

Updated 3x at 2:14 PM: I’m currently typing from the “mezzanine” separating the two rinks at Centre Ice Arena in Traverse City, and I’m trying to be as inconsipicuous as possible while Aaron Downey and Wings capologist Ryan Martin work their tails off with kettlebells, lunges and jumps, a rope pull while standing on a ball and lifts and drops of those barbells that look more like telephone poles—as only part of their workout. As I’ve been told that Mike Babcock will be watching this part of activities this afternoon, and as Babcock is going home today, I’m going to split the afternoon session to watch the players work out for a while—Nick Barnowski is up here for Michigan Hockey, and has posted several pictures of the padded kettlebell, the, uh, log the players are using…

And while Nick may have inspired me to watch the workouts because the Wings’ prospects are just gushy about their new strength and conditioning coach, Peter Renzetti, I’d really like to try and get a word in edge-wise with Babcock.

About The Malik Report

The Malik Report is a destination for all things Red Wings-related. I offer biased, perhaps unprofessional-at-times and verbose coverage of my favorite team, their prospects and developmental affiliates. I've joined the Kukla's Korner family with five years of blogging under my belt, and I hope you'll find almost everything you need to follow your Red Wings at a place where all opinions are created equal and we're all friends, talking about hockey and the team we love to follow.